A Thin Railing
by DoYouCare.Why
Summary: "You do understand. You look at him and you understand him with a dreadful clarity, and it hits you as the two of you sit there in that cursed tower surrounded by death, that both of you are tortured souls with no way to escape." DM/HG. After the war.


**A/N: This is something I thought of last night. Rated M for language and possibly disturbing themes.**

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><p>The castle is silent in an odd, still way, like everything is frozen, hanging in the solitary grasp of time, the moment before an explosion, or maybe even the moment directly after.<p>

You place your feet carefully on the stone floor. You aren't wearing shoes or socks, and the cold spreads farther with each step. Your toes curl away but your steps are slow, deliberate, and you flatten your feet against them every five steps.

Your hand trails along the castle wall, your fingers running lightly over the jagged surface. You aren't sure where you're headed, but the feel of the icy floor and rough wall anchors you, holds you in place, as if letting go will result in you floating, flying away, drifting into the dark blue sky and burning into pieces of grey ash as you hit the atmosphere and are instantly incinerated.

Sometimes, after yet another busy day, when you are sitting in your Head Girl room and secreting away your tears without letting them fall, or in the middle of the corridor when it hits you, in one terrible, infinite moment, that they're never coming back, you think that you should let go of reality and allow yourself to burn.

You haven't felt warm in so long.

Not since you saw your first dead body. Not since you saw his face twisted in an expression of acute pain, not since you fell to the floor next to his body and cried hysterically, felt his freezing hands in yours, and had to be pulled away roughly.

You keep walking. That's all you can really do, isn't it? Just keep walking. When you learned your parents had been murdered in a brutal display of "pureblood supremacy" and died thinking their daughter had betrayed them, you had spent a single day locked in your room sobbing, and then you hadn't shed a single other tear.

"It's okay to grieve," Harry had told you, taking your hands in his and looking at you with those concerned green eyes. "It's okay to cry."

"There's no use crying," you'd answered then, and felt the truth of that statement shoot through you in a single, burning streak. "Life goes on."

It's true. Life is going on, all around you, but you are missing it. You attend classes and smile and laugh brightly and move on, but you also walk in a draughty castle at three in the morning and look around you with empty eyes.

You aren't sure which version of you is winning, but you have a terrible suspicion as to which will.

You've reached the old Astronomy tower and begin climbing. Nobody comes here anymore, not since Albus Dumbledore fell to his death. You are the only one to have walked these steps since then.

At the top, you lie on your stomach and inch to the very edge of the tower, where you peer out just below the lowest rail. You cannot fit in the gap, but it would be terribly easy to catapult yourself over and jump.

You aren't sure how long you sit there, staring straight down, picturing your broken body twisting and swerving as you plummet to the ground, but you are sure it's too early for anybody to be up when a voice from behind you startles you.

"Granger," it says softly. "Don't jump."

You flinch. "Malfoy." What is he doing here? He's the last person you expect to visit the place where he almost killed Dumbledore. "What are you doing?"

He walks over to you in steady steps and sits next to you, back against the railing. He stares straight ahead and you stare straight down, but both of you are aware of the other's presence. "Thinking," he answers, and his voice is low. "You?"

You sit up and copy his position, but you then pull your knees to your chin. Both of you are focused on a spot on the opposite wall, but you are still thinking about the long drop beneath you. "Contemplating."

He doesn't move his head. "Contemplating jumping?"

You open your mouth to deny it, and then simply say, "Perhaps." You aren't sure why you are being honest to Malfoy, but you are so terribly tired of lying.

He sighs, and you look at him. You notice the bags under his eyes, his mussed hair, the lines in his face and the eyes - those hard, grey eyes without any emotion.

Those are deadened eyes.

You recognize those eyes.

He tilts his head back until it rests on a bar. He still doesn't look at you. "Oh, Granger," he says, and his voice is rough - but with pain, agony or simply tiredness you don't know. "Why would _you_ jump?"

It angers you that he presumes your life is perfect, just as everyone else does. Perfect Hermione Granger with perfect grades and a perfect future in front of you, perfect Hermione Granger with perfect friends and a perfect relationship and a perfect pseudo-family.

"A mask of gold hides all deformities." Your reply is softer than the sigh he gives after hearing it, but only barely.

He looks at you now, really looks at you, and you look away. You cannot bare to see his eyes taking you in with that look of empathy, for really, Draco Malfoy empathizing with you isn't something you can deal with. He looks at you, and he sees you, and you immediately feel the need to hide. "A mask of silver hides everything," he says softly, and you both recognize the barely hidden meaning behind those words.

"What are you hiding?"

He laughs dryly, and the sound is more painful than humorous. "Everything, Granger. Everything."

You meet his gaze, and it compels you to tell the truth. "Me too."

Silence falls, and both of you look at the ground. There are so many unsaid things lingering in the room, things like _I'm sorry_ and _It's not your fault_ and _Please forgive me_. "Malfoy," you say, when you can't deal with that strange, terribly still silence any longer, "We're so fucked up."

He doesn't even react at your choice of words, but his lips curve into a resigned smile. "All of us are, Granger."

"Some more than others."

"Yes," he agrees, "I think we both qualify." You find yourself smiling unwillingly, but when he looks at you, his face full of pain, the smile instantly disappears. You recognize that pain. You feel it every day, hide it beneath meaningless chatter and endless studying, but the pain is never too far away. "Oh, Granger," he whispers, and you feel tears welling just from the pure agony in his voice. "I can't do this any longer."

"Why?" You breathe it into the air, almost afraid of his answer. You can't do this any longer, either. You can't pretend that everything is okay, when at night you contemplate ending your life so you don't have to feel cold any longer.

"I did it for them, you know?" Malfoy says, and his voice is raw. "I joined the fucking Dark Lord for them, even though she never really cared about me and he'd been cursing me since I was old enough to know the meaning of 'failure.' I threw away my life for them, and - "

" - you don't think you can get it back," you complete, softly, feeling his pain as clearly as if it were your own. Perhaps it is your own, too. "Malfoy..."

"Don't call me that!" His outburst rings through the tower, ripping apart the stillness that is always present here. His voice drops and he looks at you, and something in his expression begs you to understand. "I never want to be called that again."

You do understand. You look at him and you understand him with a dreadful clarity, and it hits you as the two of you sit there in that cursed tower surrounded by death, that both of you are tortured souls with no way to escape.

"Draco."

Draco continues talking, but this time his eyes are trained on you. "You have no reason to jump," he insists, even though you are sure he knows that isn't true. "My life is over. Yours is beginning."

You bite your lip and swallow deeply past the lump in your throat. "Draco," you whisper. "My parents are dead, too."

His stricken expression shows that he didn't know, that he assumed you were grieving for Fred or Tonks or Remus, but not your parents. "Hermione," he says, and his eyes are, just for a second, compassionate before they return to their stony grey. "I'm sorry."

"They thought I betrayed them," you say, and once you begin talking you can hardly stop. "They thought I turned them in to save my own life."

You fall silent with the heaviness that accompanies reckless confessions. You look at him, your oldest enemy, and wonder why you're still here. You're about to leave and run, run away, ignore that this ever happened, when he does something even you, with all your immense brainpower, cannot analyze or explain.

He lifts a hand, pale and glinting in the moon, and rests it with a feather-light touch on your cheek.

You freeze.

His fingers almost seem to caress your skin as he trails them past your cheekbone and onto your chin, his index finger brushing the side of your lip just slightly. "Hermione..." Draco whispers, slipping his fingers down so that he's almost cupping your face. "We're similar, you and I." You open your mouth to reply, and he shakes his head. A few strands of hair fall in his eyes, and but they are too fine to block the grey. "Don't talk," he says, and you see the slightest smirk cross his face. You realize then, that you haven't seen that expression for nearly two years.

You, being you, speak anyway. "What are you doing?"

"It's hard," he says, as if he hadn't heard you. "Having to pretend each day. You know this, don't you? I've seen you at the Great Hall, talking to Weasley and Potter." There is no malice in his voice as he speaks the names of your friends. "They don't know anything is wrong, do they?" There is only resignation, a strange emotion of which you don't know the root. "They don't know."

You feel frozen in this one, single moment. Your lips are dry and your breath erratic, and all you can think of is that, behind those cold metal rods digging into your back, there is that drop. "Would you have jumped?"

"No." Draco shakes his head, his thumb brushing against your lip, a barely perceptible touch. "You wouldn't have, either."

"No," you agree. "I wouldn't have."

When he kisses you, you don't question it. You tilt your head up and open your lips, entangle your fingers in his fine, silky hair like each strand is a rope keeping you from the fall below. You kiss him, and somewhere in between your moving lips and his soft tongue all of the things you can't say are expressed. Behind you is death, and in front of you is him, but you aren't sure how to classify this strange, mysterious boy anymore. All you know is that you are broken, but in this moment, it's okay because he's broken too.

When you pull away, his eyes are alight with an emotion you don't bother to place. It doesn't matter; all that is important is that he isn't staring straight ahead with a deadened gaze. No, he's looking at you, and you look right back at him.

For a second, you expect a declaration - maybe a _This was a mistake_ or _Don't leave me_ or even _I love you_, but he only quirks his lips and says, "Don't jump, Granger."

"You don't either, Malfoy," you respond, and you feel the intimacy of the last hour start to recede. "And Draco - "

He stiffens.

"I don't want _you_ to jump either."

You stand gracefully and begin to walk away from him, this enigma of a boy, an enigma that has fascinated you and ensnared you and convinced you to keep your bare feet on the cold, rough floor of the castle and your mind away from the searing atmosphere above.

"Hermione!"

You turn.

Draco stands as well, and he takes a halting step towards you. "I'll see you around?"

You taste the words on your lips before you say them, and they feel _right_. "Yes," you say, and it sounds like an invitation.

The two of you walk away from each other, you up and him down, but the shadow of his kiss remains on your lips, and as you climb into your bed and draw your feet in beneath you, you realize it feels warm.

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><p><strong>Review!<strong>

**-The quote "A mask of gold hides all deformities" is by Thomas Dekker.**


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